Quotes from Gary Rossington

If you can write a song that makes people have emotions and show their feelings, that's a powerful thing and a beautiful thing.

Old-school rock bands, and blues bands, too, are kind of a dying breed.

As long as the fans keep wanting to hear new records from us every few years, we'll keep making them.

I love being Southern because of the people and the fans we have. People down here are more friendly - really warm people.

Buffalo Springfield had three guitar players, and we thought they were so cool. So we started doing the three-guitar thing, and people started calling us the 'guitar army' and all this stuff.

There's only seven chords, so you got to use the same ones over and over. It's all in what you do with them.

For one reason or another, the good God has left me on this planet; surely, I will not sit around and not do what I do naturally.

It's really weird when we're out of the country, whether we're in Brazil or Greece or some crazy place like France or Germany. When you hear your song on the radio or in a store, and you're in a different country, it's really freaky and surreal.

We didn't have much money when I was younger, so I had to collect Coke bottles and cash them in and get a paper route to afford a guitar. That guitar from Sears came with a case and an amp and everything all in one. It was really cool.

I'm feeling real good and trying to take care of myself and living healthy. As good as I can feel.

I've got two lives. Weekends, I go out and play rock star. Weekdays, I play granddad. You can't beat that.

We're not preachers, but we say, 'Let's try and change things.'

To see fans singing our songs and loving them and dancing or crying to some of them, it feels like the first time you ever played it. It really gets to you, like day one.

The more wild experiences you have, the better songs you can write.

The first time we ever used the Dixie flag for our backdrop was actually when we went over to Europe in 1970. It looked good, so we all liked it. We never meant any racial things by it.

The only reason we used the Confederate flag was just because we were from the South, and we were proud of that.

With life and grandkids and the whole thing, every day is busy, but I'm so thankful to God that I'm still here.

I think people who really want to do something do it. No matter what. And they won't quit until they do it.

We want to challenge Marilyn Manson and the rap people with the bad lyrics to write some positive songs.

I think that 'God & Guns' turned out a little more 'country' than we wanted it to be.

In Lynyrd Skynyrd, we always got our recognition.

Jacksonville back in the 1960s was kind of a redneck town. There were only two or three places where you could play our kind of hard rock - or 'hippie music' as it was called back then. You had to go to Georgia or some place else.

You have to learn to live with the hard things in life and go on.

I don't know if anybody will ever be as good as Hendrix again.